Adaptive dynamic programming boundary control of uncertain coupled semi-linear parabolic PDE

This paper develops an adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) based near optimal boundary control of distributed parameter systems (DPS) governed by uncertain coupled semi-linear parabolic partial differential equations (PDE) under Neumann boundary control condition. First, Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation is formulated without any model reduction and the optimal control policy is derived. Subsequently, a novel identifier is developed to estimate the unknown nonlinearity in PDE dynamics. Accordingly, the sub-optimal control policy is obtained by forward-in-time estimation of the value functional using a neural network (NN) online approximator and the identifier. Adaptive tuning laws are proposed for learning the value functional online. Local ultimate boundedness (UB) of the closed-loop system is verified by using Lyapunov theory. The performance of proposed controller is verified via simulation on an unstable coupled diffusion reaction process.